You know, I don't think I have come across a better example of rhetoric in the face (or absence) of reason in years! I have to make this mandatory reading for my students. The imagery! The classic use of atrocity tales and wonder tales! What artistry!!!!

Bill, you mentioned that you thought this was a sales pitch and I really have to agree. It is pure political rhetoric aimed solely at providing a cleaner, safer (Greener?) alternative to those nasty bow-togs .

Lawvol, you asked an interesting question.

Blair says: You cannot engage in purely punitive operations and then walk away. There is a certain moral obligation to fix what you break, or help create the end state that you desire, once you engage in such operations.

Please explain. Where does this obligation comes from? From the limited reading I've done, it would seem that punitive operations have been the norm for many years (e.g. the British Empire). In resorting to a moralistic argument, whose morals do we use? I'm not trying to be quarrelsome, I just want to understand the thinking. I've read a few articles advocating a desire to do away with the "you break it -you bought it" theory.
Personally, I wouldn't have argued that it is a "moral" obligation but, rather, an ethical one where ethics is defined as "right action" (I tend to use a Buddhist definition). I would put the emphasis on the successfull achievement of a desired end state, rather than on an obligation to fix what you break.

You mentioned the British Empire and the use of punitive strikes. Sure, they have been one tool in the general arsenal of force options ever since the first cities started to develope. The problem with that is that they are not the only tool and they may not be the right tool to achieve a specific end.

What, after all, is the goal behind the application of force? It could be a fairly simple "raid" mentality - "kill the men, grab the women and sheep". It could be a goal of extermination - "kill them all, God will know his own" (God, I love that quote!). It could also be a shear statement of power - "F*$k with us and this is what you'll get." All of these are "punitive" goals designed to produce different results - loot, annihilation, and a "warning" respectively.

Are those the goals we are trying to achieve in, say, Afghanistan? Nope, so we have to change the tool to achieve the desired result. This isn't a morlalistic argument, this is a utilitarian agrument. In this case, "moral arguments" and moral standings are actually part of the tool kit, and rhetoric is as important as artillery.

Let's get back to the question of goals. What was the goal in attacking Afghanistan? (BTW, I *really* don't want to deal with goals in attacking Iraq so let's stick with Afghanistan ). The first goal was to topple the Taliban regime as a punitive example of what happens when a nation supports actions that the rest of the world considers to be "illegal". It certainly wasn't out of caring about the Afghan people or the Northern Alliance. This was a punitive raid at the state level with, pretty much, full international support.

As such, in order to "send the message", it had to not only topple the regime, it had to replace that regime with another that would be acceptable to the world community and would agree to play by the international rules of the game. In order to achieve this, the "new" regime has to have enough social stability to show its own people that it can a) protect them and b) offer a better chance of achieving "success" however success is culturally defined - that could be a greater income, it could be more sheep, it could be better education and, given human variation, it could be pretty much anything.

We, and by "we" I mean the international community, pretty much went into Afghanistan realizing this even if we didn't know exactly how to achieve it. Sure, we, and now I'm talking about Canadians, used a lot of moral rhetoric about helping the poor oppressed people of Afghanistan, but that was a secord or third order cause (i.e. justification) for popular consumption. The reality was that we wanted a massive regime change and we wanted to send a clear message to any other state that was sponsoring global terrorism. Most of the people involved on the Canadian side didn't really have any axes to grind about what form the government should take, although a number of us hoped for a restoration of the monarchy, mainly because a lot of us believed it would be the most stable form of regime given its 100+ years of history.

So, back to your initial question, Lawvol.

"Where does this obligation comes from? From the limited reading I've done, it would seem that punitive operations have been the norm for many years (e.g. the British Empire). In resorting to a moralistic argument, whose morals do we use?"
The obligation is to ourselves from a purely utilitarian standpoint. The obligation arose because while we were engaged in a punitive strike, the very nature of that strike demanded certain outcomes. This type of punitive strike is, actually, in the best traditions of the British Empire (take a look at the consolidation period in Indian history, say 1850-1890 and, also, the Zulu and Boer wars). The Brits were always quite good at this type of opperation, well, at least until the FO started to get involved . BTW, this specific type of "regime change", and the absolute demographic needs of the British Empire to use it, were behind the founding of British Social Anthropology (but that's another story...).

The moral arguments are secondary or tertiary arguments which, while very important, are not in and of themselves the reasons behind the goals. As to whose morality we use (and that really is a *very* good question), the answer is surprisingly simple - we use the morality of the group that will be most effective to the selected target. Thus we use Western, Christian based morality on the home fronts and we use Afghan, Islamic based morality in the Afghan front. When I said earlier that rhetoric is as important as artillery, I really meant it, and that means choosing the right round for each particular target .

Marc